Carrier Aggregation (CA) uses a plurality of component carriers, each operating at a different frequency or within a different frequency band, for communications between devices over a wireless interface. Carrier aggregation typically is used to increase a bandwidth of a communication interface between devices in a wireless network.
Intra-band contiguous CA uses a plurality of contiguous (with respect to frequency) component carriers within a band to communicate with a wireless device.
Intra-band non-contiguous (NC) CA uses a plurality of component carriers within a band to communicate with a wireless device, but does not require that the component carriers be contiguous. That is, in the NC CA, one or more non-aggregated carriers may exist that have frequencies between frequencies of two of the aggregated component carriers.
Inter-band NC CA uses a plurality of component carriers within a plurality of bands to communicate with a wireless device, and the component carriers may be non-contiguous and in different bands than each other.
When non-contiguous carriers are aggregated together for NC CA, a combined bandwidth of the aggregated carriers may be greater than a maximum bandwidth of a circuit (for example, a baseband circuit) in a receive chain of a wireless device.